Sunday, 26 July 2015

The Sunday Post

A rojak* of items that caught my eye this
week…

Man Booker Podcast

The Man Booker Prize is one of
the leading awards for fiction in the English-speaking world; it has brought
recognition and readership to outstanding novels for over four decades. First
awarded in 1969, it has been won by several authors with links to Asia,
particularly those from the Indian Sub-continent interested in the legacy of colonialism
- including most famously Salman Rushdie, for Midnight’s Children, in 1981.

The organisers have just
launched a fortnightly podcast, hosted by UK-based radio journalist Joe Haddow.
There will be seven episodes going out on alternate Friday mornings from now
through to the announcement of the winner in October.

The mini-series will take as
its focus the prize’s tagline, fiction at
its finest. Coming up are a variety of interviews with well-known
literary figures, publishing industry experts, and past Man Booker Prize
winners.

The first episode,
broadcast last Friday, discussed Richard Flanagan’s 2014 winnerThe Narrow Road to the Deep
North, set partly in a Japanese POW camp on the Burma death railway during
World War Two, and exploring the lives of both the Australian prisoners, and
the Japanese guards. The podcast is now available oniTunesandSoundCloud.

The Raj at War: A People’s History
of India’s Second World War by Yasmin Khan

About the book: During the Second World War India produced
the largest volunteer army in world history: 2.5 million men. But, until now,
there has never been a comprehensive account of the developments on India’s
turbulent home front, and the nexus between warfare and India’s society.
At the heart of The Raj at War are
the lives and voices of ordinary Indian people. From the first Indian to win
the Victoria Cross to the three soldiers imprisoned as traitors to the Raj who
returned to a hero’s welcome, from the nurses in Indian General Hospitals, the
labourers, prostitutes and families, their everyday testimonies reveal the
great upheaval experienced throughout the land.
These previously lost voices of Indian soldiers and civilians reveal the hidden
and sometimes overlooked history of India at war, and show how mobilisation introduced seismic processes of economic, cultural and social change - decisively
shaping the international war effort, the unravelling of the British empire,
and India’s own political and economic trajectory.

About the author: Yasmin Khan is
a British writer and historian. Her first book, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, won the
Gladstone Prize in 2007 – the prize is awarded annually to a debut writer in
the UK for a history book not focussed on British history.

Details: Published in hardback and
eBook by Bodley Head, priced in local currencies.

Blog Spot

There is no blog spot this
week. Each week I invite the
administrator of a relevant and interesting-sounding blog to write a paragraph.
Do you run a blog you think may
be of interest to readers of Asian Books Blog, and which you’d like to see
featured here? If so, get in touch, preferably via e-mail - asianbooksblog@gmail.com. Thanks.

Twitter Spot

I usually make a suggestion of
one interesting Twitter account you may like to follow. But this week I’ve gone for a trio of accounts
from PEN, the international association of writers, which promotes, worldwide, the
freedom to write and the freedom to read, and which forms a global literary community
celebrating literature. English PEN is at @englishpen. American Pen is at @PENamerican.
PEN International is at @pen_int. In future, I will try to highlight PEN
accounts within Asia.

Book Club Spot

Are you a member of a book club
you think may be of interest to readers of Asian Books Blog? If so, get in touch, preferably via e-mail -
asianbooksblog@gmail.com - because I want to include a weekly book club spot on
Sundays, to complement the blog spot and the Twitter spot.